We have gathered the questions we get the most. Hopefully yours will get answered here as well. If not, please get in touch with us.
Aspect is currently in open beta and you can support us by buying an early-access license. We are currently fixing bugs together with a bunch of photographers and photo enthusiasts and are adding the last few features for the first release.
Aspect has been developed to support multiple platforms. We are currently focused on delivering the software on macOS (version 10.15 and up) and Microsoft Windows (version 10 and up).
There is also an experimental Linux version, as well as a Linux server version.
The recommended system specs are a 64-bit PC with at least 8 GB RAM, an OpenGL 3.0 capable graphics card and a display resolution of at least 1280x800.
We aim to deliver a consistent user experience between all platforms and generally provide the same feature set. There are some platform specific differences in the user interface, but overall the experience is very similar.
The one notable exceptions is support for reading HEIF images, as generated by the iPhone camera app. While macOS supports HEIF images natively, Windows requires two extensions to be installed via the Windows Store.
We understood from the beginning on that photo folders often do not only contain image files. For this reason, Aspect is able to store and synchronize files of any format in its library. The “All Files” view of the application shows the whole set of files.
Various video formats and codes are supported, as well as the following image formats: Most camera RAW formats, JPEG, TIFF, PNG, WEBP
A 64-bit Version of Windows 10 or later is officially required to run Aspect.
A 64-bit Intel or Apple Silicon Version of macOS 10.15 or later is required to run Aspect.
The Linux version we provide is still in an experimental stage and not all operating system specific features are complete, yet. Our version is built on an Ubuntu 20.04 and contains all dependencies in its AppImage. It should work on all typical modern distributions.
In addition to the full application, we also have a server version for Linux that can be run on servers and x86-64 based NAS machines.
Aspect supports HEIF images through codecs provided by the operating system. These codecs are shipped together with macOS, but must be bought separately on Windows for a small fee.
Installing both, HEIF imaging extensions and HEVC video extensions, lets Aspect read HEIF images starting with version 1.0.0-preview.16.
A group of engineers and designers who met each other at Nik Software were rather frustrated to see no innovation in the photo organization space.
After some brainstorming and research we saw a lot of potential on how we could help photographers structuring their photo pool. This is when Aspect was starting to take shape.
The full version will cost 169 USD/EUR. During the final beta phase, you have the chance to get the full version at a reduced price.
A full version of Aspect may be used on any number of computers within the same household, no matter which operating system each one has installed.
In a business setting, a single license is either restricted to a single employee, or to a single computer.
Your license will always stay valid. You will be able to use the latest update before the end of the update period for as long as you want. If you want to use any newer updates, you may choose to renew the license at any time.
Our heritage is photo editing. We worked at Nik Software and created award winning applications on desktop and mobile to enable new creative ways on how photographers edit their images.
But while most other tools focus on photo editing and ignore the challenges photographers are facing in actually finding/selecting the images. We want to solve these issues first and decided that the initial version will instead support photo editing by integrating dedicated applications for photo editing as tightly as possible.
Color management is deeply integrated into the display and image processing pipeline and should work on all supported platforms.
You can have as many libraries as you want. You can quickly switch between the libraries using the menu bar.
Note that we constantly test Aspect for performance and our internal test library has around 1 million images. So unless you have a really big amount of photos, there is no need to create multiple libraries.
While there is no hard limit, the time required to load and store the library increases with many images, as well as the amount of RAM that is used. Our internal performance test library contains 1 million images, which represents a maximum recommended amount.
When creating a library, you are asked where to store it. The default location is within your pictures folder. The actual location is shown next to the library name within the “change library” menu.
If you should ever need to manually search for a library, you can search for the catalog file, which is called “Aspect Library File.aspectnode”.
When creating a new library, the application lets you choose a path template to use for storing events or loose photos, such as “YEAR/MONTH-DAY EVENT” (e.g. “2017/10-31 Halloween”).
This pattern can also be seen and changed in the application settings.
You can change the pattern on how the events are stored within Aspects application settings.
Changing the pattern for loose photos is also possible, but is not generally recommended, because it may lead to non-media files and media files to end up in different folders, so that manual clean-up may be required.
Storing libraries on mounted network drives is fully supported.
Apart from that, any computer connected to the same LAN or WiFi can be set up to have a clone of the library that is automatically kept synchronized, so that both machines can work on the same set of photos.